Archive for March, 2012

We’ve been fighting (not literally) to keep various “Download Now” ads off of print-bingo.com because they confuse many end users. I would gladly block them all as a category in AdSense, if I could figure out which subcategory to block without losing too many “good” ads. But, until we have a good way to do that, we are blocking unwanted advertisers by their domain name.

I’ve searched the web briefly for a list of web sites to block… without luck. So, I’m posting our own list of misleading AdSense advertisers in this post.

This is strictly a list of misleading advertisers that have a big “Download” or “Download Now” button and a small amount of semi-relevant text. Many of these are offering 7-zip, PDFCreator, and other open source packages, presumably bundled with some sort of advertising.

If you find this list useful, please post your additions to the list in the comments, or at least post a comment. If we know that there is interest in this list, it’s more likely that we’ll update it!

I believe that the owners of these websites continually register new domains, so this list will probably need constant updates.

wiseconvert.com

coolpdfcreator.com

facemoods.com

downlopedia.com

ultimatepdfconverter.com

wisedownloads.com

go-downloads.com

pchealthdoc.com

soft.foxtab.com

alwaysdownloads.com

vgamenetwork.com

adlsoft.net

We haven’t done it yet, but I suggest adding a border around your AdSense ad units in the future. I can’t see this problem going away, we’ve already purged these ads once.

Ironically, it was fashionable to color-match borders from AdSense so that the ads blend in just a few years ago!

Once again, please comment if you find this useful… and post your additions.

Update 2014-01-15: After trying to maintain a list, I gave up. These ads keep showing up for new domains and new AdWords accounts. My current practice is to log in once a week and block the entire AdWords accounts via the Review Center. I’ve probably blocked a couple hundred over the last 2 years.

If you’re in IT, and you are responsible for some Windows computers, you should have heard of the upcoming critical security issue with Remote Desktop. If not, read about it here or here or any number of articles on other tech sites in the last week.

We have several clients using RDP and Terminal Server in various configurations. Usually, we’ve set them up behind firewalls that block by IP address or custom ports that make them a little less vulnerable. We’ve begun the process of making sure that the Windows Updates are current on these machines, especially those that have Remote Desktop enabled and connected to the Internet on the standard port of 3389.

Today, I ran into a machine that just could not run Windows Updates for some reason, and hadn’t for about 3 months. I tried many potential solutions, in which I won’t go into detail.

This post is not about fixing Windows Updates. This is about installing the critical security patch for WinXP SP3 for the RDP issue before the exploits begin.

The work around in my case was to manually install the patch.

This is Microsoft’s official security bulletin, Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-020 – Critical Vulnerabilities in Remote Desktop Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2671387). If you read to the bottom, you see links to pages specific to various vulnerable Microsoft OSs. This is the one for Windows XP – Security Update for Windows XP (KB2621440). On that page is a download link to get the patch! Just download and run it.

Sure, the right thing to do is fix Windows Update on this particular computer; however, installing just this patch is far, far better than nothing.

In our semi-regular search of the web for references to print-bingo.com, we found this short video by MrFloresFilm on YouTube of an educational use of our bingo card generator. It’s always fun to see where our bingo cards show up.